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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844267">Enough</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalprose/pseuds/petalprose'>petalprose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gunnerkrigg Court</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Father's Day, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flowers, Gen, less anthony positive more anthony lukewarm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:15:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844267</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalprose/pseuds/petalprose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It is Father's Day in Gunnerkrigg Court, and Antimony Carver is picking flowers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Antimony Carver &amp; Antimony Carver, Antimony Carver &amp; Reynardine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Enough</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>content warnings: anthony's questionable apparent 'favoritism' for forest-annie is mentioned. surma's hospitalization is also briefly referenced.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            It is Father’s Day in Gunnerkrigg Court, and Antimony Carver is pushing through rubble to pick flowers.</p><p>            She’s got her mother’s necklace with her today, tucked into her shirt. Annie is at home with their father, distracting him, seeing as between them both he’s inexplicably more comfortable with her than with Antimony.</p><p>            Antimony has done a very good job at not taking it personally. She has also done a very good job at ignoring what it means, for her counterpart. She’s seen how delight and confusion flit through Annie’s face, whenever Anthony quiets as Antimony enters the room. It startled her, the realization of how expressive she could be.</p><p>            In spite of the hurt it causes her to see her father close himself off, she’s not keen on making Annie feel guilty. For Pete’s sake, on the occasions when they share the bed, sometimes Annie tries to curl up, take up less space, like she still feels wretched over suddenly being an extra piece. It makes Antimony feel horrible, brings her back to when she’d yelled at her over their mother’s necklace. Annie has done that less lately, though, more comfortable now that she’s settled in to the new reality she’d found herself in after that fateful meeting with Loup.</p><p>            Today, taking advantage of the disconcerting camaraderie their father seems to reserve exclusively for Annie, Antimony is gathering up any flowers she can find for two bouquets—one put together by her, the other by Annie.</p><p>            They don’t really know what else to offer him. They don’t know what he likes. All they know is that flowers can mean <em>I care about you,</em> and it had to be enough.</p><p>            It had to be.</p><p>            (When she was a child, her mother’s bedside table had never had any flowers. She peeked into other rooms and saw tables and beds bursting with vases and cards and balloons, yet her mother’s own room remained bare unless Antimony made an effort to add decoration: a drawing here, a pretty band-aid there, all a little girl’s efforts to breathe life into a room running out of it.)</p><p>            Dressed in dark jeans and a light button-up, Antimony kneels at the border of both her lives; <em>court student</em> and <em>fire head girl.</em> She misses Coyote. He was not a good person, she knows, but bias clouds her judgement and all she can remember is how, when she’d been barred from the Woods, Coyote had yelled and thrown an earth-shaking tantrum to have her back.</p><p>            Tears prick at her eyes. Her mind wanders.</p><p>            She thinks of Ysengrin, calling her beautiful, helping her through her anger.</p><p>            She thinks of Mr. Donlan, helping her build a rocket, giving her a window into her father’s character.</p><p>            She thinks of Renard, who could be both callous and caring, a companion since the beginning of her schooling at the Court. An advocate, a guardian, only ever looking after her safety, even when there’s two of her.</p><p>            Antimony continues picking flowers.</p>
<hr/><p>            Annie grins and reminds her to wash her hands when she notices how the dirt under her fingernails tracks lines against the pristine white cardstock. They’re both sitting on the bed, a packet of envelopes between them and the flowers scattered to the point of having fallen to the floor.</p><p>            “We won’t have to use pencils if you keep that up,” Annie tells her, tapping at her hand.</p><p>            “We don’t have pencils anymore,” Antimony says. It’s true. Last week Kat had burst in and demanded their pencils from them, and the look in her eyes had struck them with such fear they’d immediately turned over their pencil-cases, no questions asked.</p><p>            Antimony does wash her hands, though, and switches her jeans for a pair of leggings since Annie had frowned at how the dust on the knees transferred to the bed. After that short interlude they continue working in silence, focused on their respective cards.</p><p>            They seal three envelopes, folded letters penned by them both securely tucked inside each. A pressed flower, a recipient: <em>to Ysengrin, to Mr. Donlan.</em></p><p>            Annie hadn’t even hesitated, when Antimony suggested it. She'd liked the idea of a gift for Ysengrin, even if he wasn't quite around any longer. When they finish, Ysengrin's letter is delivered by Renard to the border; Mr. Donlan's letter Renard hands over to Kat.</p><p>            At the Carver residence, Antimony and Annie sit, eating dinner with their father at the dining table. It is a quiet affair. There is no card for Anthony Carver; neither Antimony nor Annie have the slightest clue what to say to their father.</p><p>            It’s hard, after all, unlearning a habit you had practiced for almost as long as you were alive. It's hard to shake off the feeling they were breaking some unspoken rule. They don’t know how to communicate with him. But in the centre of the table is a vase, containing two separate bundles of flowers. The flowers are mismatched, held together by rubber bands, but the point is that they're <em>there.</em></p><p>            Enough. That’s all that they can hope for, with him. That it, that <em>they,</em> that Antimony and Annie are enough.</p><p>            Later that evening; the third envelope, the third card. <em>To Renard,</em> it reads. Renard cries, when he sees it.</p><p>            “I am physically incapable of crying in this plush form,” he says, with all the dignity he can muster. Annie meets Antimony’s eyes and they silently agree not to bring up how his muzzle is quivering much in the same way a human’s lower lip would pre-bawling-their-eyes-out.</p><p>            “If you were to cry, we wouldn’t hold it against you,” Annie says, instead.</p><p>            Antimony agrees. “We put a lot of work into making it heartfelt,” she tells Renard. “It would be such a shame if it didn’t evoke any emotional response from you.”</p><p>            “You’re both terrors,” Renard informs them, and both Annie and Antimony dissolve into helpless laughter, and after he reads the letter in its entirety, choked up, they know:</p><p>            For Renard, they will always be more than enough.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>as i was writing this i was knocked out cold at the awful cards annie was dealt in the father-figure department. renard is trying his best but he wasn't the greatest in those early years. and i mean, i chose including ysengrin over eglamore. jesus christ. it was nice writing this, not having a reason myself to celebrate father's day. it's two am here and i wrote this instead of sleeping, i hope you have a good day &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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